Some years ago it was a point of honour with every undergraduate to wear a cap which was as battered and disreputable as possible. Every freshman seized the first opportunity to break the corners of his "mortar-board" and to cut and unravel the tassel. Yet once the tufted biretta, when it was the badge of mastership, was much coveted by undergraduates. First, they obtained the right of wearing a square cap without a tassel, like those still worn by the choristers of Oxford colleges, and then they were granted the use of a tassel. The tuft in the case of the gentlemen commoners took the form of a golden tassel. Snobs who cultivated the society of these gilded youths for the sake of their titles or their cash, or tutors, "Rough to common men, But honeying at the whisper of a Lord," gained from this fact the nick-name of tuft-hunters. The commoner, it should be explained, is one who pays for his commons, a student not on the foundation. The colleges were, in most cases, intended originally only for the fellows and scholars on the foundation. The admission of other students as commoners or boarders was a subsequent development, and various ranks of students came to be recognised--noblemen, gentlemen commoners, commoners, fellow-commoners, battelers, or servitors. These grades are now practically obsolete, the only distinction drawn among the undergraduates being between the scholars or students on the foundation and commoners, the ordinary undergraduates, who do not enjoy any scholarship or exhibition. The scholar, who must wear a larger gown with wide sleeves, is known by various names at various colleges. At Merton he is a post-master, at Magdalen a demy, so-called because he was entitled to half the commons of a fellow. The history of the commoner, the growth of an accretion that now forms the greater part of a college, may be illustrated by the records of the latter foundation. The statutes of New College had not made any provision for the admission of _commensales_, but William of Waynflete, in drawing up the statutes of Magdalen, was the first definitely to recognise the system that had grown up by which men who were not on the foundation lived as members of the college. Waynflete limited the number of non-foundationers to twenty. They were to live at the charges of their own kindred; they were to be vouched for by "creancers"; and the privilege of admission was to be reserved for the sons of noble and powerful friends of the college.